Blood Hina (3 page)

He took out a screwdriver that he used to open the driver’s side door and then opened the passenger’s side. He swept an old rag over the yellow seat until Spoon stopped him.

“Mas, I’m an old route woman. Little dirt never hurt me.” She smiled and plopped squarely into the seat. He wondered if she really wasn’t feeling well, or maybe she just needed an excuse to get away from all the people. Route men and route women were like gardeners; they spent much of their day alone, but instead of mowing lawns, they drove to faraway places, delivering palms to places like Palm Springs and birds-of-paradise to Disneyland. From Haruo, Mas knew that Spoon’s late husband had been not only a route man, but had studied botany at Caltech. A genius and a self-made businessman—how could Haruo compete with such a memory?

“I guess being a best man isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be,” Spoon said as they were on the road to the freeway.

Mas was surprised. How could Spoon read his mind?

“You’re a loyal friend,” she said abruptly, causing him to almost steer the Ford across the yellow dividing line. “I’m glad Haruo has you.”

Mas stole a glance at Spoon, all folded up in her white sweater like melting vanilla ice cream. There was something in her tone of voice that sounded sad, as if she thought Haruo would need him more than ever.

The rest of the drive was quiet, other than the squeaks and shakes, ailments of the aging Ford on the 60 Freeway. Friends told him to donate the truck to some nonprofit (the talk of “volunteer” again) and get a tax write-off of the Blue Book value of the vehicle—maybe five hundred dollars, if he was lucky. But the Ford, even in its distressed, makeshift state, was worth much, much more to Mas than five hundred dollars. In fact, he would not accept any other car—new or
used, circa 1960 or more recent—in its place. Yes, Spoon was probably was right. Mas was indeed loyal, and the more broken-down you were, the more loyal he was.

City banners braggingh MONTEBELLO with an image of a flower drooped from lights on the main boulevard. Mas faintly remembered the rows of greenhouses all over the city in the fifties, although now the only flowers that seemed readily available around here were the plastic kind he often saw in Mexican restaurants.

Spoon directed Mas to turn here and there. Finally they reached a plain, wooden ranch-style house, probably built in the sixties, when residential developments and smog had chased most of the flower farms and all of the fruit ranches from Montebello.

In most cases, Mas would have just stopped long enough for a passenger to jump out of the truck, but today was special. It was the night before Spoon’s wedding, and Mas knew enough to walk her to the door.

“There’s something I want for you to have,” she said. “C’mon in while I look for it.”

Mas wanted to go home, but he obeyed and followed her into her house. A skinny girl with long hair was lying on her back on the couch, and she looked up toward the open door. The missing daughter—freckles all over her face.
Sobakasu bijin
, they used to say in Japan. Buckwheat beauty. Although this girl’s freckles looked more like buckshot that had taken the beauty out of her years ago. Still, there were remnants of something—high cheekbones and a well-defined chin—that resembled beauty for a moment in the right light.

“My daughter Dee. I think you might have met her
before.” In response to the introduction, the girl turned over on her belly like a piece of bacon that was close to being burned on one side.

Mas didn’t care about receiving such a cold reception. Her not talking to him meant he didn’t have to talk to her. But why hadn’t she gone to the rehearsal or the dinner? She must have been the one who had taken off with Spoon’s car. She looked at least forty—a little too old to be pulling a high-school stunt like that.

Haruo had mentioned something about the girl being in some kind of trouble. She was trying to get back on her feet, and Spoon and Haruo had both offered to take her in. Mas’s daughter, Mari, would never think of moving in with him under any circumstances. Well, she had a husband, a giant blonde
hakujin
gardener, and a young son now. For a long period of time, they barely talked, but now as Mari edged toward middle age, no month would pass without father and daughter speaking on the phone. Sometimes their conversations were brief. “Hi, Dad, how are you?”
“Orai.” Not dead yet
. “Howareyou?” “Takeo’s doing well in school.” “Datsu good.” “Well, talk to you later.”
“Orai.”

Their simple conversations would seem superficial to most, but Mas felt the weight of Mari’s phone calls—hearing her voice stoked embers of memory and feeling, which stayed warm for many weeks until she called again.

Mas stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets and circled the small but tidy room. There were photos on a long side table, quite a few of Spoon with her late husband, Ike. Mas hadn’t ever met Ike, but he looked like a typical Nisei man, a dime a dozen. He’d been thin, with a thick crop of hair
that seemed to progressively grey with each photo. He wore aviator glasses perched on a respectable nose, pretty high bridged for a Japanese.

Mas wondered if these photos would be removed once Haruo officially moved in after the honeymoon in Solvang, a Danish village up the coast full of hotels with windmills. Haruo would never insist on it. While most men would be threatened by images of past lovers or husbands, Haruo proudly accepted them like members of his extended family. “You knowsu, Ike was a big shot in flowers? People all ova, even in Europe and Latin America, wanna talk to him.”

“Ike supposed to go to camp in Arkansas, but gubernment sent him to Manzanar instead. Worked on a top-secret farming project ova there during World War Two.
Honto, yo
, no lie. Afta war, served ova in Japan.”

“Ike met Nancy Reagan one time. Yah, at White House and everytin’.”

Finally Mas couldn’t take it anymore. “Sounds like you gonna marry Ike, not Spoon.”

“Can’t help it. Nuttin’ wrong in being proud of Spoon’s first husband.”

Never heard you brag about your own ex-wife, Yasuko
, Mas thought to himself. But then Haruo had lost his wife and house to craps, not death, so that might not be a thing to dwell on.

Mas shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he waited for Spoon to reappear in the living room. The Buckwheat Beauty continued to ignore him, so he strayed to the fireplace, where an elaborate display was concocted out of stacks of shoeboxes.

They were Girls’ Day dolls. On the bottom level were a line of five musicians carrying drums and flutes. On the second row, a line of three women were dressed up in white and red kimonos. At the top was the royal couple, the Odairi-
sama
and the
Ohina-sama
. In the Hiroshima countryside where Mas and his family grew up, they didn’t have such elaborate displays, but he knew Chizuko’s family had. In fact, when Mari was born, Chizuko’s relatives attempted to round up a family Hina Matsuri display, but all had either been burned up in the Bomb or eaten by bugs and mildew. They said they could send over a new one, but Chizuko told them not to bother. They were part of America now, and old traditions needed to die.

Obviously the Hayakawa family didn’t feel the same way. Mas noticed that sometimes when multiple generations pushed the family tree farther and farther away from Japan, the new ones ran in the opposite direction to embrace the past.

As Mas slipped on his old Thrifty reading glasses, he could more clearly see that the dolls on the bottom row were of the discount variety. The musicians were actually made of cheap, mass-produced ceramic, probably circa Heisei Period, 1989 to now. And with the benefit of twenty-twenty eyesight, Mas realized that the three maidens were actually plastic cartoon cats dressed in pink kimonos. Just
omocha
, nickel-and-dime toys.

The royal couple, though, was different. They had exquisite white faces—wisps of eyebrows on high foreheads, fine aquiline noses, puckered V mouths, and fine detailed eyes whose black pupils seemed to follow Mas’s gaze. On their
foreheads were two ash-gray smudges, mini thumbprints. Both figurines, dressed in colorful, multilayered kimonos of silk brocade, sat on fat pillows, their arms outstretched in front of them. The man, his hair topped with a tall hat shaped like a gourd, held a paddle, while the woman clasped a fan. Mas noticed that their wooden hands even had long, distinguishable fingers.

He was about to poke one of these
hina
dolls when Dee stopped him.

“Ah-ah-ah,” she said. “No touchy. Those two dolls on the top are old. My father brought them back after being in the Army in Japan. I think from a place called Fukushima.”

Mas grunted. He’d known of other flower growers from the same area.

“Girls’ Day’s on Monday,” Dee said.

“Soka,”
Mas acknowledged. The Girls’ Day Festival, or Hina Matsuri, was on March 3, three-three. What was it about that number? The only acknowledgement of Hina Matsuri in the Arai household came yearly from Mari’s Japanese school in the form of
sakura mochi
, a confection of sticky pink rice kernels formed around a glob of red bean and then wrapped in the salted soft leaf of a cherry tree.

“I’ve been reading up on Japanese dolls.” Dee tapped a thick book on the coffee table. It seemed to weigh a good ten pounds. Mas knew that a good steak cost about ten bucks per pound and wondered if that was the case with books. “You know that Girls’ Day actually first had nothing to do with girls or daughters.”

Eliciting no response from Mas didn’t stop Dee from sharing her new knowledge. “It’s all about sin and curses,”
she said, narrowing her eyes. Her voice took on a hushed, syrupy tone—Mas knew that she was enjoying herself.

“All the bad actions committed by a person would be transferred to these dolls. Not these fancy kinds, but paper ones. Then the people would crowd a boat full of these dolls and set them out on the seas.”

And then? Mas waited.

“Sometimes they’d even set them on fire. The dolls were scapegoats. You know, the things that people blamed unfairly. But then later on, the merchants of the Japanese samurai era took over and made them into something for children to protect the home and honor the emperor. Told families that their daughters would get married only if the
hina
dolls were brought out. Three-three on the lunar calendar. The time the peach blossoms should be blooming.”

Momo
trees once grew in Montebello. From a distance, during the height of their season, they looked like pink snow suspended in air. It made sense that a tradition like Girls’ Day would be tied into growing plants. Almost everything Japanese—even surnames—had some connection to nature. Didn’t matter that the
momo
trees in Montebello had been uprooted. Everything began in the dirt and ended there, too.

“You’re supposed to have a full court of fifteen, so we had to improvise,” she said, referring to the toy cats and cheap substitutes. “But what really matters are the emperor and empress. Ours, you know, are haunted. My mother says they talk to her, especially the man—the emperor, right?”

Nanda?
What nonsense was Spoon spouting out? Maybe at her advanced age, her mind wasn’t working quite right. That might explain her decision to marry Haruo.

“I’ve met you before.” Dee sat up, pulling her skinny legs toward her body. “At Haruo’s apartment, right?”

Mas nodded.

“You’re the best man?”

Mas nodded again.
These Hayakawa girls sure like to ask questions
.

“Don’t you think that he’s too old to be getting married again?”

Although he most definitely did, Mas shrugged his shoulders. “None of my bizness.”

“I think it’s your business. If you’re the best man, you’re the best friend then. Or are you just bullshitting everyone?”

The girl was confusing Mas. And upsetting him as well. Never mind what Mas truly thought, what right did this
hoito
, beggar, have to judge her elder’s actions and use profanity on top of that? She was the one who was taking advantage of her mother’s weak nature and Haruo’s good one to let her crash in her childhood home when she should have been on her own for the past twenty years. For her sake, in fact, Haruo was bucking common practice and not officially moving in until after the wedding ceremony.

It was then that Haruo’s beat-up Honda rattled up the driveway.

“I’m going to bed,” Dee announced suddenly. As she got up, Mas noticed how her jeans hung loose at her hips, revealing a pierced navel. She gestured toward the door before she left the room. “Tell him to lock the door after he leaves.”